Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx
Japanese (kind of sadly imo) is also an aggressive acquisition language ("hey, cool word, I think I'll use it"). Even 'local' words like "pan" derive from 16th C. Portuguese traders who brought the idea of bread over. The last 40 years have seen an acceleration of 'english import words' into japanese. It helps that they mangle the words to fit the "chant of the language" but I get a bit sad when I hear "Tanku" instead of "arigato" no matter how cute it may sound.
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I disagree. Some of the words are borrowed because there is no Japanese equivalent of it. The word "pan" was used because if it were to be written in kanji, I would imagine it to be like "flour-based bacteria fermented food" which wouldn't be that appetizing. Also, when forcibly opened up to the West, Western words such as "democracy" "economy" "socialism" had to be conjured up into kanji form (minshushigi, keizai, shakaishugi). It'd be easy if you can find kanji words that fit into the term (i.e.: democracy is spelled with the kanji words that represent "people" "oriented" "based" "idea"), but some words are not available. You are thinking in terms of the western world which conjured up the ideas representing economy and politics, most Asian nations didn't have the notion of such until the mid-to-late 19th century.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexx
It helps that they mangle the words to fit the "chant of the language" but I get a bit sad when I hear "Tanku" instead of "arigato" no matter how cute it may sound.
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The phonetic meme of "thanks" in Japanese is
sankyu;
tanku is used as a huge container for liquids.